Building Blocks Lives On at Western Michigan University

(I have more interviews scheduled within the next week to flesh this out for the final draft)


May 24, 2010. Monday. 9th week. Spring Quarter. Kim Cummings sent an email to all past participants of Building Blocks with the subject line "Calling all BB/09ers: Sad announcement to make." The contents of the email were brief and to the point: "I'm calling all BB/09s--sophomores, juniors, and seniors--to meet at the end of tonight's BB seminar, 10:00 p.m. in Dewing 310. I have a very sad announcement to make."

At the meeting, he revealed to Building Blocks classes past and present that Building Blocks was going to be removed from the curriculum. And then, Building Blocks 2010 participant Allie VanHeest says, "he sat down and we organized. We held discussions with administrators, rallied in Red Square, and led a letter-writing campaign."

Building Blocks, officially listed on class registration forms as ANSO 224: Neighborhood Organizing Practicum, began as a class at Kalamazoo College in the spring of 1995. Originally designed as a way for students to develop advanced organizing skills through working on community-based projects, Building Blocks, by its last years at Kalamazoo, functioned as half-theory, half-application intensive life experience. Students, in groups of three, worked specific blocks in neighborhoods in transition in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Given anywhere between $2,500 and $3,000 in grant money – depending on how generous donations were in any given year – student organizers worked with neighborhood association managers and resident advisors to rally neighborhood residents. The cover story was that residents would be given money to make exterior home improvements – maybe to buy paint, or flowers, or shrubs to pretty the place up; maybe to fix that hole in the porch; maybe to replace the window sills. The catch was that they had to work with their neighbors to actually get the work done. The goal? Building social capital, and creating a network of neighbors that each resident could potentially rely on if the need arose.

There is a lot of heartbreak and, yes, drama surrounding the decision to discontinue offering the class at Kalamazoo. Most people have no idea why the decision was made, and even less idea why it was enforced. The decision sparked a flurry of strong responses. The residents of one of the target blocks of Spring 2010, Lowden Street in Oakwood neighborhood, wrote a letter to the editor in the Kalamazoo Gazette stating that "We're sadden by the late breaking bulletin from Kalamazoo College Provost… about the possible demise of the Building Blocks Kalamazoo Program. We can only pray that he will reconsider and acknowledge the impact that this stellar program has had…. Let's save Michigan with neighbors helping neighbors."

Students rallied. Petitions circulated campus. People wrote alumni who previously participated, begging them to contact the Provost's office and ask them to reconsider the decision – to no avail.

Student Ben Ensroth remembers the situation differently than any of the protesters. One of the students on the interim committee for the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, he had quite a bit of informal interactions with the Provost, and the President's staff. "They weren't going to change their minds," he says. "I didn't come down strongly on either side of it. The argument that it didn't really fit in with the curriculum held a lot of water. But still - did I wish they kept such a unique program? At the end of the day, yes, but it doesn't matter. Because it was such a hot button topic – the things I overheard from working with the president's staff and a lot of people from within anthropology/sociology on other things – the decision had been made. They weren't going to keep the program. It was going to get cut. There was really no hope of saving it."

Kim Cummings is the lifeblood behind the Building Blocks program. One of his stipulations for retirement was that he be permitted to continue teaching Building Blocks and his winter course, How To Change The World. He was informed of the decision to eliminate the Building Blocks program a while [check how long] before he informed his students. As soon as it was clear that Building Blocks would not be able to remain at Kalamazoo, either in the AnSo department or in the Philosophy department, as was briefly considered, Cummings started looking for alternate options.

He found his solution at Western Michigan University. The school of social work took Cummings – and the program – in. He recruited several K students, Allie VanHeest and Nicole Allman, to serve as TAs for the first year at Western. "Western was wonderfully receptive," he says. "Don Cooney from the School of Social Work knew about the program well… and was quick to encourage the school of social work to pick it up." A lot of that actually had to do with how students at Kalamazoo were rallying to keep the course. "People at Western were seeing how hard students were fighting for it at K," Kim says. He sees that as instrumental in Western's decision to pick up the course.

This spring marks the first year that no Kalamazoo students have been involved in Building Blocks since its inception. His current TA is a Western student, Erin Kaplan, and all of his students are also Western students currently attending Western Michigan's summer intensive session.

This transition, beyond Western's quick decision to integrate it into their curriculum, has not been easy for Kim, or for the program. "What's been hard is to get the number of students," he says. "I don't have the same connections at Western that I did at K."

He went to 22 different classes across several departments at Western and advertised the Building Blocks course to all the students in each class. "Kalamazoo is really unique," Cummings says. Western is a lot larger, and as such, word of mouth is not the driving force in drawing students to the program that it was at Kalamazoo. Still, many Western students seem to be interested in the program. Unfortunately, "Western students are more likely to be employed, part time or full time," Kim says. "Or they have other classes, so they can't spend as much time in the neighborhoods." Because of this, and the fact that Western's summer session is several weeks shorter than an academic quarter at Kalamazoo, he has had to make the course less academically demanding.

Additionally, students have less wiggle room to deal with possible setbacks. "They really have to do everything exactly on time because there's less forgiveness in the schedule," Kim says. Whereas, while the program was at K, students had several weeks to coax residents of the neighborhoods to participate, at Western, "they just have to do it, and if residents don't sign up at the start, it's really hard to integrate them."

The biggest problem arises with the fact that Western's summer session is not covered by financial aid. Many interested students had to withdraw their applications to participate in the Building Blocks class for financial reasons. As it stands, rather than three students per participating blocks, now only two – and, in one case, one – students are on a team.

Still, the community overall is still grateful to the program. The Eastside neighborhood has not applied to be part of the program for several years. Still, neighborhood association director Pat Taylor says, "People keep coming by the office and asking if it's going to be back this year. They really miss it."

Others agree. One resident of Vine neighborhood was overheard saying, "I saw the building blocks signs go up the other day. It's always great to see them there."

The Building Blocks board of directors is excited about the program's new home at Western Michigan University. Still, Kim is keeping his eyes open for other possible opportunities, in case it just doesn't stick there. As for the future – "Who knows?" Kim says. "If we just can't get enough students, maybe we'll move to resident organizers."

In any event, it seems that – for the time being – even though Building Blocks no longer has a home at Kalamazoo College, it will continue being a community presence for as long as possible.